At Search Engine Watch Forums, the official Microsoft adCenter representative has admitted that Microsoft does use Intellitxt ads to promote Live Search. As always, the rep only admitted after much discussion and growing tensions following the launch of adCenter 3.7.1.

A forum member has some strong points which hopefully Microsoft will take notice of. He says " Real Traffic from search and not content, and not garbitrage as Mel66 pointed out (SEM History101: Ask.com, Findology.com, ABCSearch.com). If there is no traffic, then who cares about the rest of the features and offerings? Full control of including (targeting) and excluding (Drop kicking) publishers within the content network. This means we also need full access to run reports on who these publishers are and where they are driving traffic from – no cloaking. (SEM History101: Syndication.google….) We can deal with just about any UI if the traffic is there (SEM History101: DTC) however it is clear an adwords style editor is a requirement for the moderate to power users of PPC. Nothing is more painful than taking 20 minutes to go through a single campaign set up, when we know we can set up 20 robust campaigns on Google in the same amount of time. Correct the Max CPC. I don’t know exactly what is wrong here, but I can tell you that I should not have to be setting my bids at $28 for terms that I bid $2.75 for on Google & YSM and still achieve top positions and great traffic. Lastly but still important – Timeline. These items above need to come to fruition quickly. SEMs have been waiting well over a year for MSN to kick into high gear with a prime time offering. The longer it takes the more doubters you will have and the harder it will be to win back marketers (SEM History101: DTC and Panama)."

The Microsoft rep claims to be using Intellitxt solely "to drive trial and interest in Live Search itself." They end it by saying, “We are not syndicating adCenter ads on 3rd party sites at this time.”

Navneet Kaushal

Navneet Kaushal is the founder and CEO of PageTraffic, an SEO Agency in India with offices in Chicago, Mumbai and London. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet's expertise has established PageTraffic as one of the most awarded and successful search marketing agencies.

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